Abstract
AbstractSurface artifacts dominate the archaeological record of arid landscapes, particularly the Saharo‐Arabian belt, a pivotal region in dispersals out of Africa. Discarded by hominins, these artifacts are key to understanding past landscape use and dispersals, yet behavioral interpretation of present‐day artifact distributions cannot be carried out without understanding how geomorphological processes have controlled, and continue to control, artifact preservation, exposure and visibility at multiple scales. We employ a geoarchaeological approach to unraveling the formation of a surface assemblage of 2,970 Palaeolithic and later lithic artifacts at Wadi Dabsa, Saudi Arabia, the richest locality recorded to date in the southwestern Red Sea coastal region. Wadi Dabsa basin, within the volcanic Harrat Al Birk, contains extensive tufa deposits formed during wetter conditions. We employ regional landscape mapping and automatic classification of surface conditions using satellite imagery, field observations, local landform mapping, archaeological survey, excavation, and sedimentological analyses to develop a multiscalar model of landscape evolution and geomorphological controls acting on artifact distributions in the basin. The main artifact assemblage is identified as a palimpsest of activity, actively forming on a deflating surface, a model with significant implications for future study and interpretation of this, and other, surface artifact assemblages.
Highlights
Surface accumulations of lithic artefacts are key archaeological archives for understanding patterns of mobility and landscape use by past hunter-gatherer populations
The arid and semi-arid regions of Arabia contain an abundance of surface artefacts that might be typologically assigned to dispersing groups of Homo erectus and later H. sapiens populations (Potts, Mughannum, Frye, & Sanders, 1978; Zarins, Ibrahim, Potts & Edens, 1979; Zarins, Whalen, Ibrahim, Morad & Khan 1980; Ingraham, Johnson, Rihani, & Shatla, 1981; Zarins, Murad & Al-Yaish, 1981; Zarins, Rahbini & Kamal, 1982; Petraglia, 2003; Petraglia & Alsharekh, 2003; Rose & Petraglia, 2009; Petraglia, Haslam, Fuller, Boivin, & Clarkson, 2010; Armitage et al, 2011; Rose et al, 2011; Delagnes et al, 2012; Bailey et al, 2013; Inglis et al, 2014; Groucutt et al, 2018)
A comparison between the state of patination of the artefacts within sediments exposed in the test pits, and the artefacts collected on the surface, indicate that some of the artefacts recovered from the present day surface were previously contained within the grey sediment unit, and deposited following cessation of tufa deposition at this location and have been exposed by deflation
Summary
Surface accumulations of lithic artefacts are key archaeological archives for understanding patterns of mobility and landscape use by past hunter-gatherer populations (see, for example: Holdaway & Douglass, 2012; Holdaway, Douglass, & Fanning, 2012; Holdaway & Fanning, 2014; Davies, Holdaway, & Fanning, 2016, In Press). While surface assemblages may lack the tight chronological constraints provided by sealed archaeological remains, the patterning of artefacts across a landscape is the legacy of a suite of activities that resulted in the discard of artefacts. This patterning has the potential to retain signatures of past hunter-gatherer landscape use recorded on a spatial scale beyond that possible from single site excavations (Foley & Lahr, 2015; Jennings et al, 2015). The surface artefact record of Arabia provides a potential opportunity to examine behavioural, cognitive and technological change, and its implications for dispersals out of Africa, if effectively interpreted
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